the force is strong with this one

when my friend kelley hit me up to do some star wars-themed cookies for li'l d's birthday, i jumped at the chance to tackle something i hadn't had the chance to do.  seems kind of crazy that i've done all sorts of other characters, but this was my first shot at one of the most iconic movies of all time.  now, i'm not a huge fan of the series or anything, but i remember loving the original three movies back in the day.  don't come at me with the newer movies from the last decade or so.  i got no interest in those whatsoever.  anyway, since we wouldn't be able to attend the party, at least this way there'd be a little piece of us there.  heh.

as i always do when asked to do a design i'm unfamiliar with, i hit up the google for ideas.  of course, there were a ton of images to look at ranging from incredibly intricate to…well, let's just say there are some less-than-accurate designs out there.  and i should've known that my friend sweet sugarbelle would've produced what ended up being my favorites out of the bunch.  she does awesome work, is a ridiculously talented artist, and yet her designs aren't impossible to emulate.  in fact, half the time she even provides step-by-step tutorials to make it super easy to do.

williams-sonoma had put out a set of star wars cookie cutters a couple of years ago that i never bothered to pick up, mostly because i had zero interest in them.  plus, i don't really like the kind of cutters that have the piece on top that you use to push the cut dough out.  it limits the thickness of the cookie, and i don't like to be told what i can do, yo.  so after i figured out which characters i wanted to make, i went through my entire stash of cutters to see what i had to work with.  i settled on these:

the tombstone = r2d2.  the green bell, turned upside down and trimmed a little = yoda.  the gingerbread boy was my plan b for yoda, but it didn't come out right.  the square = light sabers.  the upside-down snowman, with a little trim at the bottom = c3po.  and that red bell, of course = darth vader and his loyal army of storm troopers.  see?

i'm not gonna lie, i was pretty stinking proud of myself for getting this one figured out.

after i had the bazillion bags of frosting in different colors and thicknesses all ready to go, i finally got started.  i flooded most of them with their base colors and gave them a little time to dry out a bit before starting on the details.  the storm trooper had to be done in reverse - i tried flooding and then adding the details while still wet so that everything would be flush, but it proved to be too much frosting that oozed down the sides.  oh well.

i had a lot of fun working with these.  anytime i have more than a dozen to make, it's nice to have several different designs to do so that i only have to do a few in each style.  doing the same design for a lot of cookies gets kind of…miserable.

the droids:

the evils:

now, don't laugh at my poor yoda.  the teen said he looked more like frankenstein, but i think you can tell who he's supposed to be - especially when placed alongside the rest of the cookies.

the full collection (i definitely took way too many pictures of these cookies)!

i wonder what my next new design to conquer will be.